Seventy: fifth 
Annibersarp 
Series 


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INDIA AWAKENING 
Rev. H. D. Griswo.p, D. D. 


It goes without saying that in the supreme 
matter of the soul’s turning unto God there is 
no form of experience which may be regarded 
as alone typical and normative. People differ 
so in temperament, education, inherited ideas, 
and habits of thought and life that every one 
who finds Christ finds Him in his own way. 
The law, then, is not the identity, but rather 

“the variety of religious experience.” 
course, there is identity in the sense that all 
true conversion involves “repentance toward 
God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” But 
in the details of the great experience every 
man is a law unto himself, because every man 
represents an original and unique product. 

This principle of the “variety” of Christian 
experience holds not only of individuals, but 
also of groups. The Great Commission is to 
preach the gospel to the whole creation; but 
the whole creation to be evangelized consists 
not only of individuals, but also of individuals 
gathered into social and political groups; that 
is, into families, clans, castes, races, nations. 
Each group is stamped with its own peculiar 
characteristics, and hence tends to react intel- 
lectually, emotionally, and practically, in its 
own characteristic way. Now we are to dis- 
ciple the nations (Matt. xxviii:19). But each 
nation is sure to respond to the truth, so far 
as it responds, in its own way. Which means 
simply that the problem of missions is psycho- 
logical and sociological as well as religious. 

To illustrate: (1) Followers of a low form 
of religions are in general more prompt to 
accept the religion of Jesus Christ than fol- 
lowers of a higher form. For example, the 
Karens of Burma, the Koreans, the South 
Sea Islanders, and the “Untouchables” of In- 
dia, as compared with the adherents of Hindu- 
ism, Islam and Buddhism. Crude religions, 
such as the various forms of Animism and 
devil-worship, usually offer a comparatively 


1 


short resistance to the faith of Christ; (2) 
the instances cited above illustrate the prin- 
ciple that “the good is the enemy of the best.” 
The more good there is in a religion, the 
greater in general will be its resistance to the 
best religion. Thus Hinduism and Buddhism, 
Judaism and Islam contain more truth and 
consequently have more resisting power than 
the devil-worshipping religions of fear. (3) 
Where individual liberty prevails and indi- 
vidual initiative is the rule, as in Europe and 
America, and to a considerable degree also in 
China, Japan and Korea, men come out one 
by one and enter the Christian Church; but 
wherever individualism has not yet come to its 
rights, as in the caste- bound organizations of 
India, people will move im masses, if at all. 
Individual initiative will be the exception. Mass 
movement will be the rule. All of which 
means that the story of the Conversion of 
India, as written by the future historian, will 
differ widely in detail from the story of the 
conversion of other nations. 

The outstanding fact of the present situa- 
tion in India is indicated by the formula— 
India Awakening. It is neither India asleep, 
nor India awake, but the transition from the 
one to the other, India Awakening. It is an 
awakening from, through, and unto. India is 
in process of awakening from her age-long 
sleep of ignorance, superstition, and incapacity. 
Last summer in a remote valley of the Him- 
alayas I had the opportunity of intimate ac- 
quaintance with two Kashmiri Brahmans. One 
was a man of the old school, very learned in 
Sanskrit, but very ignorant of all else, very 
superstitious, and in practical things very in- 
capable. The other was a man of the new 
type, who had been a pupil in the Mission 
School, Srinagar, knew English fairly well, 
cherished liberal ideas on many things, and 
was the government official in the place. He 
was not a Christian yet, but in his outlook 
and efficiency he differed toto coelo from the 


2 


other. The one represented in himself India 
asleep; the other, India awakening. 

Now a sleeper may be awakened in many 
ways—by the call of a friend, by an alarm- 
clock, by the light of the dawn, by any or all 
of these. In like manner the awakening of 
India is taking place through the multitud- 
inous forces of enlightenment which, like a 
river, are pouring through the length and 
breadth of the land, e.g., the vast order and 
system of the British administration, the many- 
sided activity of Christian Missions, education 
through schools and colleges, railways and tel- 
egraphs, books and newspapers, foreign study 
and travel. Another illustration from Kash- 
mir: Last summer we dined with several 
Kashmiri Brahmans, old students of ours, who 
had studied and travelled in England. They 
were polished men of the world, and occupied 
important government posts. The negative 
and destructive work of emancipation from 
the provincialism, ignorance and superstition 
of the past had thoroughly taken place. In 
accent and manner and breadth of view they 
showed the influence of foreign travel and 
’ study. One of them had sent his only son, a 
boy of ten or twelve, off to England and placed 
him in a Wesleyan school noted for its high 
religious tone, in order that the lad might 
escape from being contaminated and spoiled by 
the influence of relatives. This is a straw 
showing the direction of the wind. The father 
and mother were not Christians, but they 
placed their boy in an environment where his 
becoming a Christian would be almost a matter 
of course. Instead of the father shall be the 
children. If the fathers must needs perish in 
the wilderness, there is hope that the children 
may enter the promised land. 

Too much significance must not be ascribed 
to the matter of inter-dining. Caste rules are 
adjusting themselves to the necessities of mod- 
ern life, and especially to the necessities of 
the educated. Some of the leading Hindus 


3 


of North India, Brahmans by caste, frequently 
dine with their Muhammadan and Christian 
friends—in private. It is doubtless generally 
known, but the practice is winked at. No Hin- 
du is necessarily nearer the Kingdom of God, 
because he dines with one. It is possible that 
the rules concerning inter-dining and even in- 
ter-marriage may be greatly modified without 
in any way destroying the force of caste as a 
great obstacle in the way of the open confes- 
sion of Christ. Even now, especially among 
the educated, inter-dining is a venial sin, 
whereas the confession of Christ through bap- 
tism is a mortal sin. 

But, thirdly, the awakening of India is not 
only an awakening from the ignorance and 
lethargy of the past, through the multitudinous 
forces of enlightenment which are acting upon 
India in the present; it is also an awakening 
to a new consciousness, a new sense of need 
for the future. It is an awakening to a con- 
sciousness of many needs—intellectual, social, 
political, industrial, moral, religious. To illus- 
trate the intellectual awakening: In 1849 Dr. 
C. W. Forman began the work of Christian 
education in Lahore. The first boys who at- 
tended school were induced to come by the gift 
to each of a small coin daily. So slight was 
the consciousness of intellectual need at that 
time. The growth since then in the desire for 
education may be measured by the fact that 
in the same city of Lahore at the last admis- 
sion to the Forman Christian College the pres- 
sure of students clamoring to be admitted was 
so great that scores and scores had to be 
turned away for lack of room. But the chil- 
dren of newly baptized Christians from the 
low castes are in very much the same condi- 
tion as the high-caste boys were in 1849, whom 
Dr. Forman had to hire to come to school. 
Their desire for education is weak and uncer- 
tain. In connection with the Hiramandi 
Church in Lahore City, a church made up en- 
tirely of low-caste converts, there is a boys’ 
school under the care of Mr. McKee. Not 


4 


long since the boys of this school struck and 
sent word to Mr. McKee that they would come 
back if he would give them a treat of candy 
and sweets. Such conduct is no ground for 
discouragement. It only means that the pupils 
of the Hiramandi School, as well as their par- 
ents, are only slightly awake to the benefits of 
education. But so were the high-caste boys 
and their parents a half century ago. 

The political awakening of India may be 
summed up in the recent agitation for political 
rights, which has resulted first in Lord Mor- 
ley’s Councils Bill providing for Imperial and 
Provincial Legislative Councils in India; and, 
secondly, in the declaration of the King-Em- 
peror at the Delhi Durbar, Dec. 12, 1911, an- 
nulling the Partition of Bengal, the exciting 
cause of the recent unrest, and transferring 
the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi. 

Industrial development is sorely needed in 
India. Its population is too exclusively agri- 
cultural, and consequently has to import too 
much from abroad. The consciousness of the 
need of industrial education is increasing in 
India day by day. In this as in all other de- 
partments of progress Christian Missions have 
made large contributions, and are likely to 
make still larger contributions in the future. 
The Allahabad Christian College, through its 
technical and agricultural departments, may be 
expected to play an important part in this de- 
velopment. 

In many respects the most significant form 
of awakening in India is the social awakening 
on the part of the depressed classes or “Un- 
touchables.” There are over 50,000,000 of these 
people in India, and they are largely accessible 
to the gospel to-day. Already hundreds of 
thousands from the ranks of the “Untouch- 
ables” have been received into the Christian 
Church, and from among them powerful 
preachers of the gospel have been raised up; 
for example, Rev. Labhu Mall and Rev. Mallu 
Chand of the United Presbyterian Mission in 
the Punjab. It used to be thought that the 


5 


Christian Church by receiving outcastes and 
“untouchables” into its communion would con- 
demn itself to be permanently a church only 
for the low castes. But the real result has 
been entirely different. If some have scoffed 
at the Christian Church on this account and 
have called her the church of the outcaste and 
the “untouchable” even as the Pharisees called 
Christ “the friend of publicans and sinners,” 
yet others—and among them many men of 
light and leading in the Hindu community— 
have acknowledged this as the glory of the 
Christian Church. Perhaps the greatest apolo- 
getic in India to-day for the truth of Chris- 
tianity is the zeal of the Christian Church for 
the salvation of the very lowest. And this 
new and revised estimate of the value of the 
work of the Christian Church for the outcaste 
and “untouchable” reveals at the same time a 
new consciousness of the sacredness of human 
life and a new power of moral and spiritual 
evolution. It indicates that many who are 
still within the ranks of Hinduism are not far 
from the Kingdom of God. 

The full magnitude of the task which the 
Christian Church has undertaken in India at 
the command of her Divine Lord may be es- 
timated from the following facts and statis- 
tics: 

1. The population of India, Burma and 
Ceylon, according to the census of 1911, is 
316,019,846, of which 3,876,000 are Christians. 
In spite of the terrible ravages of plague, the 
numbers have increased by 20,000,000 during 
the last decade. The increase of the total 
population has been 6.4 per cent.; that of the 
Christians, 11.6 per cent. India is one of the 
three congested areas of the earth’s surface, 
China and Europe being the other two. In- 
dia’s population is about one-fifth of the hu- 
man race. How great the task of the Church 
in India, as estimated by the numbers to be 
won! 

2. Three great races constitute the basis of 
India’s population: the Dravidian, Aryan and 


6 


Mongolian. The Aryans have contributed 
their civilization and religion, and have im- 
pressed upon Hindu society its characteristic 
organization of caste, a social system unique in 
the history of the world for its power of re- 
sisting disintegration and preventing the 
growth of individualism. Nearly twenty years 
ago I said to my language teacher: “Pandit, 
what would take place in India if caste did not 
exist?” He answered without hesitation, as if 
voicing a foregone conclusion: “The people 
would all become Christians.” How great, 
then, is the task of the Church in India as 
estimated by the magnitude of the obstacle of 
caste! 

3. The illiteracy of India is terrible. It 
may be contrasted with that of America, 
where 90 per cent. are literate and 10 per cent. 
are illiterate. But in India the figures have to 
be reversed. There 10 per cent. are literate 
(a most liberal estimate), and 90 per cent. il- 
literate. How great the task of the Church in 
India as estimated by the illiteracy to be met 
and overcome! The one hopeful thing in the 
situation is that the illiteracy is slowly but 
steadily decreasing. Mr. Gokhale’s Education 
Bill, if it has become a law, as reported, will 
provide for a universal scheme of popular 
education and will inaugurate a new era for 
India. i 

4. Three great religions are contending with 
Christianity for the prize of the Indian Em- 
pire, namely, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. 
In other non-Christian countries either Islam 
alone or Buddhism alone is the chief antag- 
onist of Christianity, but in the Indian Em- 
pire Christianity is confronted by the serried 
ranks of the three strongest non-Christian re- 
ligions of the world. How great, then, is the 
task of the Church in India as estimated by 
the number and strength of her adversaries! 
It looks as if there would be fought out on 
the soil of India the supreme battle of the 
ages. 


=7 


What has the Christian Church been able to 
accomplish in the face of these odds? 

1. It has gradually built up a Christian 
community of 3,876,000 souls, and during the 
last decade the percentage of the Christian in- 
crease has been nearly twice that of the gen- 
eral increase. The Christian growth is from 
three sources: First, the natural increase of 
the Christian community itself; secondly, ad- 
missions from the “depressed classes” or “un- 
touchables,” frequently in such large numbers 
as to merit the name of “mass movements”; 
and, thirdly, admissions relatively few and 
sporadic from the ranks of Hindus, Muham- 
madans and Buddhists. 

2. This analysis of the Christian increase 
indicates the threefold nature of Christian 
work in India. It is. first, work for the Chris- 
tians themselves through churches, Sunday- 
schools, C. E. Societies, prayer meetings, 
schools, colleges, theological seminaries, con- 
ventions, special services, missionary societies, 
Christian literature, etc. The organized 
Church is the true centre of effort and the 
real basis for India’s evangelization. Chris- 
tian work in India is, secondly, work among 
the accessible classes, which consists in the 
baptism and teaching of low-caste converts. 
It is, thirdly, preparatory work for the classes 
not yet specially accessible, namely, Hindus, 
Muhammadans and Buddhists, a work which 
consists in teaching and (in some cases) in 
baptizing and further training. 

3. Inside the Indian Church movements big 
with promise have recently taken place. Many 
congregations, schools and conventions have 
been visited with revival, and the result has 
been a new sense of the holiness of God and 
of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. The forces 
of indigenous Protestantism in India have 
been organized into the Indian Missionary So- 
ciety, a movement prophetic of further unity. 
Most of the Presbyterian churches in India 
have united into the Indian Presbyterian 
Church, and besides this negotiations are on 


8 


foot for a large federation of Christian bodies. 
The revival referred to above touched the 
Church alone. The next great revival in India 
may be expected to touch multitudes who have 
received their education in Christian schools 
and colleges, and so are more or less prepared 
for the mighty working of God’s Spirit. The 
aim of all work for the 3,876,000 Christians is 
to make them a living and efficient evangelistic 
instrument. : 


4. The Christian Church in India, besides 
caring for the members of her own household, 
is also ministering to two large and strongly 
contrasted communities outside the Church. 
She is baptizing and (more slowly) teaching 
the “untouchables,” of whom there are more 
than 50,000,000. She is also teaching and 
(more slowly) baptizing Hindus, Muhamma- 
dans and Buddhists, of whom there are at 
least 250,000,000 in the Indian Empire. It is 
easy to baptize, but hard to teach, a low-caste 
man. It is easy to teach, but hard to baptize, 
a high-caste man, or, indeed, a member of 
any of the strong non-Christian faiths. As 
Mr. Sherwood Eddy says, “this is the day of 
seed-sowing among the Brahmans and of reap- 
ing among the outcastes” (India Awakening, 
p. 123). The aim of work among the low- 
caste people is to teach, baptize, train and as- 
similate as rapidly as possible. Splendid work 
of this kind has been done in the Farrakhabad, 
Etah and Etawah Districts of the North India 
Mission, as well as in many places in the 
Punjab Mission. 

5. What is the aim and significance of 
Christian instruction given to non-Christians? 
By a kind of instinct the various missions 
working in India have through good report 
and evil report kept at school work for non- 
Christian boys and girls until a vast number 
have been educated in mission schools. “One- 
third of the education in colleges is in Chris- 
tian hands. There are also 11,500 primary 
schools with 361,000 scholars under mission- 
ary control” (Sherwood Eddy, op cit., p. 115). 


9 


Through Christian instruction the Christian 
Church in India has made a large and vitally 
important contribution to the awakening of 
India. There has been, it is true, much sow- 
ing and comparatively little reaping (as yet). 
But the sowing is done in faith and hope, and 
the time of reaping may be nearer than we 
think. It may be that the various castes and 
communities of India will become accessible 
one by one, and that India’s conversion to the 
religion of Christ will be by communities, even 
as the conversion of the aborigines of India to 
Hinduism was and is by communities. At any 
rate, the ultimate justification of Christian ed- 
ucation for non-Christians will be in its fruits. 

Christian generalship is needed, and the cate- 
gories of war should be applied. Sherman’s 
March to the Sea was more enthusiastic work 
than Grant’s Siege of Vicksburg. Neverthe- 
less, both were necessary. The reception and 
training of multitudes of converts from the 
outcastes is more inspiring work, perhaps, than 
the steady siege-work of Christian instruction 
given to non-Christians. But, again, it may 
be affirmed that both are necessary, in order of 
the conquest of India for Jesus Christ. 

6. The American Presbyterian Church has 
three missions in India, the statistics of which 
for 1910-1911 are as follows: 


Churches... ¢-c6,):4ssis vole aa 57 
Ordained native preachers........ 61 
Communicants:s35. ites eee ae 8,764 
Added during year............... 1,717 
No. of Sunday-school scholars..... 10,535 
No.of schools. oth cae nee 266 
No.of colleges. “flu ee eee Oe 2 
No. in boarding and day schools.. 10,973 
Income on the field............... $82,284 


What, then, is the Christian outlook in 
India? 

It is partly conditioned by. the fact that In- 
dia is a birthplace of religions. She has pro- 
- duced faiths which have affected the life of 


10 


over one-third of mankind. Buddhism was 
the first missionary religion in the world’s his- 
tory. The productive period of India as a 
mother of religions may possibly not yet be 
over. There is still an intense desire on the 
part of every outstanding religious personality 
in India to found a new religion, or at least 
to manifest religious leadership. As illustra- 
tions may be mentioned Pandit Agnihotri, 
founder of the atheistic Der Samaj, and Pan- 
dit Mangal Der, founder of the Satyugi Man- 
dali, The point of view of every newly found- 
ed sect or religion is universalistic, 4.e., its gos- 
pel is regarded as intended for the whole of 
mankind. The religious teachers of India 
have not lost their persuasiveness, their power 
to stir the imagination, and create a follow- 
ing. It is sufficient to cite the examples of 
Swami Vivekananda and Swami Tirath Ram, 
and to refer to an article in the March (1912) 
number of the Missionary Review of the 
World, entitled, “The Heathen Invasion of 
America.” 

There have been in the history of the world 
two birthplaces or creative centres of religion: 
Palestine-Arabia and India. Hebraism emerged 
from the Arabian desert. Jehovah’s earliest 
seat was at Sinai. St. Paul retired to Arabia 
for meditation. But the early Church neg- 
lected Arabia. She found the desert tribes on 
the south a hard missionary field perhaps. By 
and by the nemesis came. Arabia, which ages 
before had brought forth Hebraism, teemed a 
second time and brought forth Islam. And 
the desert tribes of Arabia which the Eastern 
Church found it inconvenient to evangelize 
crushed the Eastern Church. Which things 
are a parable and a warning. 

We must not think, then, that by some in- 
evitable tendency India will become Christian 
as a matter of course. India’s past history has 
been a record of brilliant prospects and of 
blighted hopes. Some of the hymns of the 
Rig Veda gave promise of an ethical monothe- 
ism almost as high and pure as that of the Old 


11 


Testament prophets. But the vision of God 
. soon passed and the penitential note as sound- 
ed in the hymns to Varuna was heard no 
more. Buddhism seemed on the point of con- 
quering the whole of India; but Buddhism 
lost its vigor, was vanquished by the forces of 
the Hindu Revival, and was finally expelled 
from the land of its birth. Only on one con- 
dition has the Christian Church a right to 
anticipate the conversion of India as the “di- 
vine event” toward which the whole course of 
India’s ancient history and modern awakening 
moves—only on this condition that she prove 
herself a valiant worker together with God by 
the Christlike character of her sacrifices and 
the unfainting fervency of her prayers. 

The work is still largely preparatory in In- 
dia. There has been as yet no adequate re- 
turn for all the men and women who have 
laid down their lives in India and for all the 
treasure which has been expended there. The 
story of the “Lone Star Mission” is familiar 
to all, how that more than once it was threat- 
ened with abandonment because of its un- 
fruitfulness. But the time of reaping came 
at last, and now this same mission among the 
Telugus numbers over 150,000 persons in its 
Christian community. In some respects India 
as a whole may be called the “Lone Star Mis- 
sion” of the Christian Church. But there is 
every reason for the belief that the compara- 
tive unfruitfulness of the early stages of Chris- 
tian work in India is due only to the special 
character of the soil, requiring an unusually 
long time for sowing and tillage. The future 
of India is as bright as the promises of God. 
And so to all who support the work in India 
by their gifts and prayers as well as to all who 
labor there for the spread of the gospel there 
comes the apostolic word of command and 
promise: “Let us not be weary in well-doing; 
for in due season we shall reap, if we faint 
not. 


12 


The Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian 


Church in the U. S. A. 
156 Fifth Avenue, New York City 


April, 1912 


